I am off to Europe in a few minutes for two and a half days in London and two and a half days in Munich. In London, I'll spend Easter Monday with actor Shaun Prendergast and his family (Shaun was one of the stars of my film FAST TRACK). On Tuesday, I'll be meeting my UK agent for the first time face-to-face for breakfast and then he's got meetings set up for me with some studios. Then I am jetting off to Munich, where I will be joining my good friends at Action Concept to pitch some projects to broadcasters. It's going to be a whirlwind week but I am really looking forward to it. It's been a year since I've been to Europe but it feels like much longer, especially after spending so many months working there in 2006 & 2007.
Me Me Me
Goodbye, Starlog
Starlog Magazine is no more — at least not in print. This is very sad news for me because I put myself through school writing for the magazine (among others) and it had an enormous impact on my life that I am still feeling today.
On assignment for Starlog, I visited hundreds of movie and TV sets and interviewed so many actors, screenwriters, directors…people like Tom Cruise, Robert Zemeckis, Roy Scheider, Paul Verhoeven, Roger Moore, Michael J. Fox, Michael Crichton, William Friedkin, Sigourney Weaver, Richard Donner, Timothy Hutton, Gene Roddenberry, Richard Maibaum, Dan O'Bannon, Tom Selleck, Wes Craven, Kurt Russell, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Marquand, Tobe Hooper, Johnny Depp, George Lucas, and Lorenzo Semple Jr., to name just a few. And I learned a lot about the movie and TV business along the way.
I collected some of those interviews, along with articles by my friends (and fellow Starlog writers) William Rabkin and Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, in two books — Science Fiction Film-Making in the 1980s and Dreamweavers: Fantasy Film-making in the 1980s.
Perhaps the highlight of my time as a reporter for Starlog was when they flew me to London to cover the premiere of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, the first James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton.
All the journalists were invited by the studio to the premiere, which Prince Charles and Lady Diana were attending as well. We had to wear tuxedos and were driven to the event in limos. There were huge crowds being held back behind barracades in front of the Odeon Theatre as we pulled up. I got out of the limo just as a short young lady was emerging from the limo in front of me, so we walked in together. People were going nuts, taking pictures of us and waving. I leaned over and whispered to her: "Makes you wish you were famous, doesn't it?"
She laughed, patted my arm, and we parted in the lobby. Almost immediately I was swarmed by my fellow reporters. One of them asked "Do you know who you were walking with?"
I had no idea. I figured she was another reporter. He told me it was Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. I still had no idea who she was. So either she thought my remark was clever or that I was a complete dolt for not knowing who she was. But I like to think that somewhere out there is a photo from that event with a caption like "Chrissie Hynde with unidentified lover."
But, most of all, I am thankful to Starlog for my family. If not for the magazine, I might never have met the charming Lofficiers, which would have been a terrible thing…since they introduced me to my wife Valerie. We've been married for 19 years and have a 13-year-old daughter, Madison.
So for me, Starlog was more than a magazine that covered science fiction and fantasy movies, books and TV shows. It changed my life.
Good-bye, Starlog. I will miss you.
UPDATE: Starlog is gathering some of the reactions to the bad news. My good friend Dave McDonnell, long-time editor of the magazine, posted this:
"Lee Goldberg is an old friend of mine. His unsolicited interview "The Man who Killed Spock" (WRATH OF KHAN writer Jack Sowards) was on my desk the day I started. I lobbied to buy it and he wrote countless pieces for us."
It was my first national magazine sale and I was totally thrilled. That sale, along with tearsheets from some of my subsequent Starlog articles, led to me writing for Newsweek, United Press International, American Film, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times syndicate, among many others. But you never forget your "first."
UPDATE 4-15-2009: More reactions to the news from Entertainment Weekly, SFSignal, Bob Greenberger, Mark Evanier, John Kenneth Muir and my cousin Danny Barer.
Blessed
I am blessed to be in Missouri. Literally. On the flight to St. Louis, the stewardess told me to have a blessed night. And today, when I had lunch in Cape Girardeau at the Everything Is Fried Buffet (okay, that wasn't the name of the place, but it should have been), the waitress told me to have a blessed day. What they really should have at the buffet is a priest on hand to perform last rites. I was the thinnest person in the place by fifty pounds, and I'm not exactly scrawny. Everything they serve is fried, breaded, or noodled. It's no wonder that every patron except me prayed before they ate.
Cape Girardeau is Rush Limbaugh's home town, which explains a lot about Rush. There's a mural of him on the levee downtown and I've got a picture of myself in front of it. I skipped the tour to his birthplace and the soda fountain where he hung out as a kid and the alley where he was beaten up every day after school.
I'm here for the 94th Annual Missouri Writer's Guild Conference. Yesterday and today Kate Angelella, an editor at Simon & Schuster, and I critiqued manuscripts that were read to us. I kid you not. Two pages were read to us and we had to offer a critique in front of the audience. That's not really fair to the writer or to us, but we all played along anyway. Kate and I were very candid and it's a credit to Missouri writers that neither one of us was beaten up in the parking lot afterwards, though one guy did follow me into the mens room and, while I was peeing, asked me for more advice on his story.
"This isn't a good time," I said, standing at the urinal.
"Why not?"
"Because I am peeing,"
He looked over the divider at me peeing. "How many Diet Pepsis did you have today?"
I wasn't the only one who got hit up in the bathroom for editorial guidance. One of the women authors was sitting in a stall when a lady in the next one slid a manuscript under the divider for her to read.
My keynote address went all right — I only made one reference to bowel movements and three to gang rape, or so I am told. Afterwards, I was asked to assist with the awards ceremony and to hug the winners (most of whom were women). I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least fifty awards given…a good many of them to the same woman. By the end of the night, I felt like I'd committed adultery.
Tomorrow I do a three hour TV writing seminar and then I head back to L.A…
Missouri Bound
Today I am on my way to speak, and teach a TV writing seminar, at the 94th Annual Missouri Writer's Guild Conference in Cape Girardeau over the weekend. I have never been to Missouri, so I am looking forward to it. I don't know if I'll have a chance to blog from there or not.
I’m Going Global
I recently attended a Writers Guild seminar on international opportunties for writers. The basic message was that writers need to start thinking globally if they want to survive in this business. I have been thinking globally for a while now…especially after spending much of 2007 working abroad (writing and producing the action movie FAST TRACK, among other things). It also helps that I've been married to a French woman for nineteen years…France feels like my second home and I am pretty comfortable in Europe.
So with the global marketplace in mind, I have been looking around for an agent to represent me across the Atlantic. I am pleased to say that after a long search that I've just signed with Peter MacFarlane at MacFarlane Chard in London, one of the best agencies for actors, directors, producers and writers in the UK. I'm very excited about this new relationship and the great opportunties that this could lead to for me overseas.
Meanwhile, I will continue to be represented for film & TV in the U.S. by Mitchel Stein and in publishing worldwide by Gina Maccoby.
I am very loyal when it comes to agents. I have been with Mitch for fifteen years and Gina for seven. So if things work out with Peter, I'll probably still be represented by him when I'm eligible for social security…
The Skinny on Gun Monkeys
You may have noticed that I haven't talked much here lately about my TV and screen work. That's because I don't feel comfortable talking about projects that are in development and not yet a certainty. But since CrimeSpree broke the news about me scripting the movie version of GUN MONKEYS, I've been getting a lot of emails asking about me about the project.
I've always been a huge fan of Victor's book. In fact, we first met at the Edgars, where GUN MONKEYS was up for an award, and have been good friends ever since. About a year or so ago, I optioned the book and wrote a spec screenplay adaptation, which my agent then shopped all over town. The script was strong enough that it got me "meet and greet" meetings at studios and production companies everywhere…and nearly got me a gig rewriting a Major Studio Action Movie, but that fell through (however, the aborted Major Studio Action Movie rewrite got me into business with the Director, with whom I have been out pitching TV series concepts). More on that whirlwind experience another time…
Eventually Two Hot Young Producers with deals all over town eventually optioned my GUN MONKEYS script, and with it my underlying option on Victor's book. They spent several months in negotiations with A Major Hollywood Star who was interested in directing the film…but not starring in it. That deal fell through at the last minute.
Now the producers have attracted the interest of a Major Distributor and a Major Hollywood Agency is packaging GUN MONKEYS. They've also signed director Ryuhei Kitamura, who has an astonishing visual style but is better known in Japan than he is here (his only U.S. film was last year's horror flick "Midnight Meat Train"). That will change soon, whether it's with GUN MONKEYS or another film. I'm told that the script and the director make an attractive package and, for the last few weeks, another Major Hollywood Star has been circling the project. If he signs on, things should come together very quickly…but that's a big IF.
I don't know whether all of this will lead to the movie finally getting made, but it has been a interesting ride for Victor and me. It has also given me a refresher course in the feature film business, which I've discovered is a completely different planet than the TV world that I have been living on for so long. More on that some other time…
Last Day in Paradise
I had two panels on the last day of Left Coast Crime…one was hosting a mystery trivia contest in which my friend Robin Burcell was stumped by a two-part question in which the correct answers were "Robin Burcell" and the name of the lead character of her first book. Maybe she was just sunburned, tired, or hung over…or the question was badly worded. To be fair, I was so relaxed after a week in Hawaii that I probably would have missed a question in which I was the correct answer, too. But it was very funny nonetheless.
The other panel, which included Jan Burke, Rhys Bowen, Honolulu librarian Cynthia Chow, and LCC organizer Bill Gottfried, was about…actually, I have no clue what it was about. People asked us questions and we answered them with wit, cleverness, and amazing insights into human nature, politics, religion, sex, and philosophy. All in all, I had a great time in Hawaii and was truly honored to be LCC's toastmaster (I even got a very, glass sculpture as an award…as did Barry Eisler and Rhys Bowen…which I will share with you when it arrives by post in a few days).
(Pictured, me looking goofy in my Monk hat and LCC 2009 t-shirt… and my embarrassed daughter deciding to be seen with me anyway)
Crime in Paradise
The best part for me of Tuesday's Left Coast Crime conference activities occurred in the evening. First I screened an episode of MONK and answered questions for the audience. It's rare that I get to see one of my episodes with an audience larger than my wife and the family dog (and they both usually sleep through everything I write on TV). I then spent a few hours on the patio chatting with my wife, my daughter, and my friends Barry Eisler, Robin Burcell, Jan Burke, and Twist Phelan. We talked about everything from dating to booksignings. It was great fun.
The sun finally came out in full force on Wednesday morning. I started the day as toastmaster for the brunch and awards banquet, which I hope was as much fun for the audience as it was for me. The conference isn't over yet, but I can safely say that Bill and Toby Gottfried have pulled off another successful Left Coast Crimes. They announced that the next Left Coast Crime will be in Los Angeles and then Sacramento in 2011.
After the awards, my family and I played hookey from the conference to swim, snorkel, and do some sight-seeing, returning in time for an all-author signing at five. We ended the day by going out to dinner with authors Jonathan Hayes, Jason Starr, and Michelle Gagnon. That was a lot of fun, too.
Tomorrow I have two more panels and then I'm going to try to sneak to the beach to burn the few spots on my body that aren't already charred.
UPDATE: Rhys Bowen reports on the awards brunch and yesterday's conference events for the St. Martin's Press blog.
Aloha from Hawaii
It's been cloudy and rainy for the first three days of Left Coast Crime 2009 here on the Big Island of Hawaii, but it hasn't dimmed the enthusiasm of the attendees. Bill & Toby Gottfried have always delivered great conventions and I am pleased to report that LCC 2009 is no exception.
I haven't attended many panels (besides my own) but I've enjoyed chatting with readers and authors, something the layout of the vast, open lobby encourages with many comfortable sitting areas where you can feel the warm ocean breeze (without getting soaked by the rain). On the first night, I spent a few hours chatting at a table with authors Robin Burcell, Tim Maleeny, and Jonathan Hayes…and as time went on, our number grew to include Twist Phelan, Barry Eisler, Rhys Bowen and Meg Chittenden (by then we'd moved down to the poolside bar). I'd never met Jonathan before — he's a Senior Medical Examiner in Manhattan and wrote a serial killer novel called PRECIOUS BLOOD. You'd think he'd be a dark and brooding fellow, but he's quite the opposite…charming, funny, and a terrific storyteller. I'm going to have to read his books now.
Twist told me that she and author Jan Burke got lost on their way to see the volcano, which was probably a good thing, because Denise Hamilton and her family also headed there and got so bogged down in heavy rain, that they gave up and camped out at a hotel in Hilo for the night instead.
Yesterday I sat in on a readers group that was discussing one of my DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels and that as great fun for me. I was also on a panel about humorous mysteries and my fellow panelist Parnell Hall had the audience howling with embarrassed laughter as he described his battle with an auto-flushing toilet in a New York airport. We only discuss lofty writerly issues at these conferences.
I have no silly questions to share with you today or salacious gossip…but i'm working on it.
(pictured on the right…Meg Chittenden, me, Rhys Bowen and Robin Burcell).
Mr. Goldberg Goes to Hawaii
As you read this, I am on my way to Hawaii with my family to attend Left Coast Crime 2009, where I will be serving a toastmaster and speaking on several panels. Fun, sun, and mystery novels. It doesn't get any better than that. Paradise in Paradise. I am truly a lucky man.
I have to thank my publishers, Penguin, for donating copies of "Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii" for the attendees…and the USA Network for sponsoring the book-bags that everybody will be toting.
The authors attending include Barry Eisler, Vicki Hendricks, Rhys Bowen, Jan Burke, Dana Stabenow, Laurie King, and local boy Lono Waiwaiole, one of my favorite authors of dark noir.
I don't know how often I'll be able to blog, so forgive me if things slow down here over the next week…